Jackie Braun - If the Ring Fits...

She’d always played it safe. Until now.

Practical Rachel Palmer’s aversion to risk-taking led to a marriage that just didn’t fit. Now single again, she’s embracing her newfound independence—and the first step is taking her jewelry business worldwide! For that she needs expert help from Italian Antonio Salerno....

His business help soon turns personal. And being in close-enough-to-kiss proximity to a sexy playboy makes Rachel feel she’s taking a flying leap into deliciously risky territory. It’s everything she’s been craving...but this is a man famous for loving and leaving. Surely falling for him would be a step too far?

So his favorite jewelry designer was single now.

He couldn’t quite figure out how he felt about that. As time went on, his relationships were becoming shorter and shorter. In each of the past three, Tony had become restless after mere months.

And each ending brought him back to Rachel.

What was it about Rachel Palmer that captivated him so? Part of it, he supposed, was that she remained a puzzle. They’d known one another for five years, ever since he’d walked into her quaint little shop on a whim and had admired a necklace one of the clerks was wearing.

“This is Mrs. Palmer’s design.”

Mrs. Palmer. Tony had never been able to figure her out.

She was very different from the other women he knew, personally and professionally. She was all business all the time. She never let her hair down, figuratively or otherwise. Today, however, he’d glimpsed a softer side, just a hint of vulnerability that left him intrigued.

And there was the not so small matter that she was no longer a Mrs.

Dear Reader,

Every woman knows a Tony Salerno, whether or not he comes with a sexy Italian accent. Charming, handsome men with a bedroom smile who like to flirt and can make a woman feel ridiculously feminine with a simple glance or smile. But do such men make good husbands?

Rachel Palmer is sure they don’t, which was why she married a man like Mal. Staid, predictable, boring Mal, who winds up having an affair with his secretary. So much for Rachel’s theory. So much for playing it safe.

Now she’s left to ponder a question: If she was so far off the mark with Mal, might she also be dead wrong about Tony?

I hope you enjoy If the Ring Fits.... As always, I like to hear what you think. Email me through my website at www.jackiebraun.comor become a fan of Romance Author Jackie Braun on Facebook.

Best,

Jackie Braun

If the Ring Fits…

Jackie Braun

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Jackie Braun is a three-time RITA® Award finalist, a four-time National Readers’ Choice Awards finalist and the winner of a Rising Star Award for traditional romance fiction. She can be reached through her website, www.jackiebraun.com.

“There is something about an Italian accent that just screams romance. But ultimately actions speak louder than words.”

—Jackie Braun

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For Andrea Cerofolini and Meredith Fridline. Grazie!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

“I’M divorced.” Rachel Palmer raised her chin after saying so and affected a smile.

Hmm. She sounded defensive. She wrinkled her nose at her reflection in the mirror and tried again.

“I’m no longer married.” This time she added a careless shrug to the mix. It didn’t help.

Hands on her hips, she announced baldly, “That’s right. Mal has been doing the nasty with his secretary, and I was the last to know.”

Sucker.

Maybe she should just stamp that on her forehead and be done with it. If only it were that simple.

As Rachel was discovering, divorce wasn’t an ending. Nor was it a beginning exactly. It was a transition. An emotional, a physical and, certainly, a financial shift of seismic proportions. The problem was she had no idea where she would wind up once the tectonic plates of her life settled down again.

She needed to figure it out and fast. As of yesterday afternoon, her marriage was officially over, decreed so not only by the two parties involved but by the state of Michigan. Rachel Palmer, née Preston, was a single woman once more. She wrinkled her nose again at her reflection. A single woman inching toward thirty-three and past her prime child-bearing years, as her mother so helpfully had pointed out during dinner the previous evening.

Dinner had been Heidi’s idea. Her younger sister said they should go to Maxie’s, the same upscale restaurant where Mal had proposed, and celebrate.

“It will be like erasing the past. A do-over. Come on, Rach. Now isn’t the time for mourning,” Heidi had insisted cheerfully as they’d left the Oakland County courthouse.

Against her better judgment, Rachel had agreed. She’d regretted it as soon as a round of fruit-garnished drinks arrived at their table. While their mother nibbled pineapple off the skewer, Heidi had raised her glass.

“Here’s to the start of an exciting new chapter in your life.”

Exciting new chapter? Her sister should have been named Pollyanna. It fit her perpetually optimistic personality.

Rachel had reached for her water. “Heidi—”

“If you’re free tomorrow night, I have someone interested in meeting you. We can double date.”

“Heidi—” Once again that was as far as she’d got before her sister cut her off.

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s nice and harmless.” The younger woman had scrunched up her face and taken another sip of her overly sweet drink. “Kind of boring, actually, but he’s polite and well-groomed. The first guy doesn’t count anyway. Everyone understands he’ll just be your rebound man.”

“I don’t think this week will work for me.” Or the next, or the next…indefinitely. But Rachel knew her sister. It was best to leave it open and save herself the inevitable argument.

“You haven’t been out in ages, Rach.”

Rachel’s mouth had fallen open at that. “I just got divorced. Today.”

Their mother had made an indelicate snorting noise. “That didn’t stop Mal.”

Heidi had taken a more diplomatic approach. “You and Mal were legally separated for the past year. You even stopped wearing your wedding band three months ago.”

“In part to get you off my back. You kept hounding me about it,” Rachel had shot back.

Besides, the ring represented a promise, one that had been broken. But Rachel didn’t agree with Heidi’s assessment that she needed to get back into the dating scene right away. It wasn’t that she still loved Mal. Oh, she mourned the demise of their marriage and the failure it represented, but she wasn’t pining over her ex any longer. Even so, that didn’t make the thought of dating again any more palatable.

Rachel’s hollow-eyed self gazed back at her in the mirror now. She wasn’t like her outgoing younger sibling, who could strike up a conversation with a stranger in the grocery store and then be invited out for dinner or drinks. She’d found meeting men awkward and intimidating when she was twenty-two. She didn’t delude herself that it would be any easier as a divorced woman of thirty-two.